Ear-tags are typically used for identifying animals such as production animals, livestock, farm animals, pets, and even some wild animals for research purposes. Ear-tags serve primarily to identify an animal and can be used for purposes such as but not limited to: organization and recording of livestock, to indicate the animal's owner, status of having a disease or being free of a disease, vaccination status, and traceability of livestock animals such as tracking movement of an animal through life including tracking its meat, meat processing or other animal product tracking. For example, in Europe an animal identity is printed on an official tag and is similar to a “passport ID of the animal”.
Since procedures such as vaccination and/or testing an animal for a disease are expensive, attempted fraud procedures for misusing ear-tags is a possibility and has to be prevented. In particular, removing an ear-tag from one animal (such as a disease free and/or vaccinated animal) and transferring it onto another animal (such as an animal that has not been tested for a disease and/or not been vaccinated) has to be prevented.
Several ear-tags are presently available in the market. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,208 describes a two-part cattle ear-tag having male and female parts that interlock to attach to the ear and have a cap that protects the device from being removed and transferred from one animal to another. The cap is designed to be damaged by any attempt to manipulate the tag and the damaged cap is an indicator of tag-tampering.
Several laboratory tests are typically carried out on most farm and production animals to test the animals for having a disease, and/or being carriers of a disease, and/or for gene analysis for breeding purposes. Hence, there is a need to obtain samples of tissues from animals for laboratory testing. A tissue sample can conveniently be obtained from an animal during the application of an ear-tag for identification of the animal. An ear-tag applicator with a means to remove a part of ear tissue is described in US Patent Application 2010/0210011. The ear-tag described in this U.S. Patent application has a male and female part similar to that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,597,208, but additionally comprises a cutting element in the male part and a sample holder in the female part for removing a sample of the ear tissue when piercing the ear. However, this device does not prevent tag-tampering since the sample holder container is located below the female part. Upon detachment of the sample container, the part below the female part of this ear-tag is freely accessible to a manipulator to transfer from one ear to another.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a better ear-tag attachment device that also provides for sample tissue isolation and furthermore prevents the ear-tag from being removed and transferred to another animal.